CQG is a bit more expensive than eSig. Does CQG provide better charting for spreads, or is it better suited for intraday trading because of its spread DOM?
I was referring to the fact that CQG IC is the best integrated charting / execution platform that I am aware of for spreads. It's strength in my opinion is the ease of using custom technical indicators ( which I have developed for Spread Trading ), the breadth of the products supported, and the historical quality of the data. I am not a fan of the quality of other execution platform's historical data. If you are swing trading spreads, you have the luxury of economy on your side in terms of charting and execution. No need for real time charting data, and all you require in terms of execution is a platform that supports exchange spreads ( which is the way to go IMHO ). You can very effectively swing trade spreads for just a few hundred dollars per month for charting/execution. If you have some sort of intramarket higher frequency arbitrage to exploit, And the backing for it in terms of ECN infrastructure and expenses, I would personally go the route of Orc or RTS - not TT or CQG-IC. Just my 2 cents, and YMMV.
I guess you get what you pay for. CQG > IB but IB is free! RTS & Orc > TT > CQG but again they get significantly more expensive.
Well, the real question is what are you using it for quite frankly. In terms of spread trading, it is not necessarily more profitable to trade 100 round turns per day versus holding a position for X number of days or weeks. You can make $50K in a month intraday trading Bobl/Bund 100 lot spreads or you can take a full point holding a 50 lot spread for three weeks (theoretically speaking in both cases) I suppose - it depends on what strategy works for you and what tool does it the best. Obviously, you don't need to spend $20K per month leasing RTS, selling half your soul to a high end prop firm in exchange for their ECN infrastructure and exchange access, and feeding Bloomberg data into a MatLab toolbox if you're gig is swing trading. If you can manage to step back from the turbulence and model for and hold a position for longer timeframes - you can spend your money capitalizing trades and not enriching the "provider" and brokerage industry. Likewise, if you have a legitimate spread arbitrage - by all means ride that horse until it drops dead under you with the strong caveat that there will be at present or in the near future smart, capitalized, automated competition for that trade and it will be very expensive to compete in that domain. Different trading styles can require radically different expense requirements to be successful.
BTW: Am I the only one that notices stop orders don't work with ICS positions? I know they've had issues (and still continue to) with *combo* positions and stops (which IMO is purely because they haven't taken the time to implement it), but an ICS position is not a combo, regardless of what TWS says it to be. I can attach a child profit taking limit order. I cannot attach a stop order. The only option is "adjustable stop" and that doesn't do anything when I try it. I've opened a ticket with them, let's see if I get a response.
IB has confirmed that they can replicate stop orders not working right with ICS positions and have said they'll ask the devs about it.